Rising Up:
Helping struggling readers with multi-sensory reading instruction

2024 | Written by Faith Schantz, Report Editor

Deja Halloway, of Crafton Heights, was excited to begin her first job last winter, as a “Reading Warrior.” The Reading Warriors program, run out of the Neighborhood Learning Alliance in Garfield, sends teens to after-school programs to support younger children as readers and learners. Deja’s location was Pittsburgh Woolslair PreK-5, her former elementary school, and she was happy to be back there.

She met with students in the school library two or three afternoons a week. In her role, Deja says, “I help with their homework, and I talk with them. I socialize with them. I make sure that they have what they need.” Often, she would start a conversation with a student by asking, “What’s your favorite part of your day?”

At the time, Deja was a 9th grader at Pittsburgh Obama 6-12, studying the Japanese language and considering a career in business. Even though she’d been an elementary student herself not so long ago, working with current students and seeing the world on their level was “eye-opening,” she says. Additionally, “It made me a little bit more compassionate for people who are educators because I know how hard it is now.” Despite the challenges—or perhaps because of them—“I’ve kind of thought about going into education,” she says. “I love working with these children. They’re so bright, and it gives me hope for the future.”

At 15, she wasn’t old enough yet to tutor children individually, but she did participate in training provided for Reading Warriors by the Learning Disabilities Association of Pennsylvania (LDA of PA). The local nonprofit, an affiliate of the national LDA, offers free training in “multi-sensory” reading instruction for organizations that work with children in the Out-of-School-Time space.

The connection the Neighborhood Learning Alliance made with LDA of PA is one example of how Pittsburgh organizations are reaching across traditional boundaries—including areas of focus, public vs. private education, and ability/disability—to address the ongoing crisis of low reading proficiency among the city’s children.

The need to help those students, especially children in families that are economically disadvantaged, was one of the reasons Dr. Collin Diedrich and Carrie Gardner founded LDA of PA in 2018. Looking across the landscape, they saw many organizations that support people with learning disabilities, but few that offered direct services. To fill that gap, they reviewed their own networks to see what they could provide. Diedrich is a research scientist who has multiple learning disabilities himself, so one goal was to increase neurodiversity in STEM fields. He’s also an improv actor. “I noticed that the skills that you need to overcome the negatives associated with having learning disabilities could also be addressed through improv comedy,” he says, such as developing confidence and learning to handle failure and mistakes. So he wanted to include improv workshops and comedy shows. Gardner is a dyslexia advocate who was on the board of the Pennsylvania branch of the International Dyslexia Association at the time. She had a network of dyslexia-focused specialists who could train others to be early literacy tutors. And LDA of PA was born.

Its early literacy program includes both small-group tutoring at community sites and one-on-one intervention, as well as training for other organizations. According to LDA of PA staff, multi-sensory tutoring is appropriate for any struggling young reader, not just those with learning disabilities.

The program uses a mix of systematic instruction in foundational skills—based on the “science of reading”—and the multi-sensory component, which offers more ways for a child’s brain to make connections. Those fall into four categories. Students not only see a letter (visual) and hear the sounds it can make (auditory), but they might also “sky write” the letter in the air or make its shape with their bodies (kinesthetic), or tap on the letter or draw it on a textured surface, such as sand (tactile). They also read aloud and discuss stories during a session.

To date, LDA of PA’s trainers have worked with staff from Housing Opportunities Unlimited in the Hill District, Voices Against Violence in Beltzhoover, and Reading Warriors both at Woolslair and Pittsburgh Miller PreK-5. In addition to Miller, they also offer small-group tutoring at two other Hill District sites: Bedford Dwellings and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh’s Hill District branch. With the support of foundations and individual donors, the nonprofit has been able to offer the training and small group tutoring for free. At any of the sites, tutors might identify individual children as needing more intensive support. One-on-one tutoring (see the sidebar) takes place at the Pittsburgh New Church School in Point Breeze, a private, Christian school for children with dyslexia. Costs for one-on-one intervention depend on family income.

One of the decisions Diedrich and Gardner faced early on was whether they would require a learning disability diagnosis for a child to receive services. “We ended up choosing not to do that because of the high cost of getting a diagnosis, and even [the lack of] education around whether students have learning disabilities or not. And so, the cause of why a student might be reading below their grade level doesn’t matter to us,” Diedrich says. Based on students’ growth on assessments, he’s concluded, “This is just a really effective way of teaching neurotypical and atypical students.”

In the beginning, he and Gardner thought they could train an organization’s staff and let them take it from there. But it turned out that tutors need an ongoing connection. Now, Diedrich and Gardner don’t make an offer of training unless they can also commit to providing oversight and support.

Early Literacy Head Tutor Lani Mosley has seen students become more successful at school generally after participating in tutoring. “The kids make it their business” to share their achievements with the tutors, she says, with comments like, “‘I want you to see my handwriting. I want you to see my work.’” One girl showed Mosley the As and Bs on her report card. “She definitely improved a lot, and she was excited,” Mosley says. But eventually she sat down, and asked for the help she needed in the moment. Among a barrage of questions was, “Can tutoring be more days?”

For information about small-group or one-on-one tutoring for your child, contact LDA of PA at info@ldaofpa.org or 412-212-7087.

If you’re interested in becoming a tutor, which is a paid position, contact LDA of PA at tutoring@ldaofpa.org.

One tutor, one child, reading

It’s a hot June day outside, but it’s cool in the classroom inside the church. The leaded windows show a view of trees, and strains of music from a cello lesson in another room float down the hall. Two people sit at a table: Sidney Mullis, manager of LDA of PA’s Early Literacy Program, and a ten-year-old boy. The setting is the Pittsburgh New Church School, a private, Christian school for children with dyslexia. The boy, here for his 94th tutoring session, attends a charter school.

Mullis lays out letter cards with “blends” from a pack labeled with his name, and he reads them out loud, while clutching a squeeze ball that helps him concentrate. The pace is fast; the tone is serious, but light enough to accommodate the silly voice he occasionally likes to use. Sometimes he taps on a card with the ball. Sometimes he tucks the ball under his chin. “Let it be a helpful aid,” Mullis reminds him.

 “What three letters make C soft?”

 “I, E, and Y,” he responds.

They switch to the “auditory drill.” Mullis says a sound and asks him to repeat it and write the letter. They begin with “uh.” “What letter is this?” He answers, and adds that O and U are “basically the same thing.”

The lessons, according to Mullis, are systematic, repetitive, predictable, and consistent—all elements that build students’ confidence. For the tactile part, which might include drawing a letter with a finger on a textured surface to help form a picture in their brains, it’s trial and error at first, she says. But students typically are quick to say whether a carpet square, an embroidery grid, or a piece of velvet feels right to them.

Often, they start out with an attitude of “I hate reading. I don’t want to be here,” she says. In school classrooms, for many children, reading is associated with failure, humiliation, and shame. Mullis says tutors address these feelings by using light, nonjudgmental ways to point out mistakes, such as simply touching a card or asking the child to trace the letter, and then moving on.

Normally, the hour-long session would include writing words and sentences and reading a story together. Today, Mullis ends early because a specialist is going to conduct an assessment of the boy’s progress. He seems slightly nervous about it, but she reassures him, “We’ll see how much you grew.”